Library Accessibility Services

Types of Accessible Formats

Braille: A tactile system of cells and dots.

Closed Captioning: Captioning translates the audio portion of a video presentation by way of subtitles, or captions, which usually appear on the bottom of the screen. Captioning may be closed or open. Closed captions can only be seen on a television screen that is equipped with a device called a closed caption decoder. Open captions appear whenever the video is shown. Captioning makes television programs, films and other visual media with sound accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Described Video: With described video (also known as descriptive audio) all relevant action scenes and on-screen text (such as credits) in video, TV programming, Web-based multi-media or movies is described and read by a narrator.

Digital Audio: Can be in MP3 format, with human voice, no navigational features or Daisy which stands for Digital Accessible Information System.

ePUB: Is an electronic book format that has become the industry standard, allowing eBooks that use this format to be read on a wide variety of e-Readers.

E-Text: Is a general term for any document that is read in digital form, but especially a document that is mainly text. The most common four file types of electronic formats used in the education setting are: Microsoft Word, Portable Document Format (PDF), PowerPoint, and Excel Spreadsheets.